This Naked Mind. Annie Grace

I wreaked in my relationships, and the pain I caused my husband. I want This Naked Mind to be a life raft, a wake-up call well before we reach “rock bottom” and our drinking becomes unmanageable.

      If about 87% of people drink, it seems fair to assume that the majority believe themselves to be in control.⁴² To be clear, I am not saying that everyone who drinks has developed a physical and neurological dependence on alcohol. It is not that everyone who sips alcohol is addicted but that everyone who drinks alcohol has a chance of becoming addicted. Furthermore, the point of addiction or dependence is unknown to the drinker and is generally not known until the drinker attempts to cut back. The obvious problem is that you can’t know when you are in control. Nothing seems different, and in fact as humans we tend to feel in control until something significant shows us that we are not. Even then we will vehemently deny we have lost control.

      The End of the Blame Game

      Why is it hard for us to admit that alcohol itself is the primary issue? That alcohol, like any other drug, is addictive and dangerous? That life circumstances, personality, and conditioning lead some victims down into the abyss of alcoholism faster than others, but that we are all drinking the same harmful, addictive substance? That alcohol is dangerous no matter who you are? Have you heard the saying, “When you hear hoof-beats, think horses, not unicorns?” Perhaps we need to take another look and realize the simpler answer makes more sense.

      If you are not convinced, that’s OK. We will talk more about this. What is important now is that you entertain the idea that you might not be fully in control of your drinking. After all, you cannot solve a problem you don’t realize you have.

      So that begs the question, when exactly did we lose control?

3.

       THE DRINKER OR THE DRINK? PART 2: THE DRINK

       “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”

       —F. Scott Fitzgerald

      A Dangerous Delight: The Nectar of Death

      Allen Carr, an author and addiction expert best known for helping smokers overcome nicotine addiction, uses a perfect analogy for how addiction works: the pitcher plant.⁴³ This analogy is powerful, both in making sense of addiction in your conscious mind and in reconditioning your unconscious mind.

      Have you heard of a pitcher plant? It’s a deadly, meat-eating plant native to India, Madagascar, and Australia. Imagine you are walking by a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop, and you smell the doughnuts frying. It’s hard to resist the smell of doughnuts. A pitcher plant is like Krispy Kreme for insects. You are an unsuspecting bumblebee flying through the woods. Suddenly, you fly through blissfully perfumed air. It makes your little bee tummy start to rumble, and you want to get a taste.

      You fly closer to the plant; it looks like a delicious treat of fresh nectar. It smells great. To get a taste you must fly inside the rim. You land in the nectar and start to drink. But you don’t notice the gradual slope under your feet. You are caught up in the moment, enjoying the treat. You begin to slide down into the plant without realizing it. You only notice the intoxicating nectar. Then you begin to sense the slight slide; gravity conspiring against you, but you have wings. You are confident you can fly out of the plant at any time. You need just a few more sips. The nectar is good, so why not enjoy it?

      You think, as most drinkers do, that you are in control; you can leave the plant at any time. Eventually the slope becomes very steep, and the daylight seems farther away as darkness closes in around you. You stop drinking just enough to see dead, floating bodies of other bees and insects around you. You realize you are not enjoying a drink; you are drinking the juices of other dead and dissolving bees. You are the drink.

      But can’t we have the best of both worlds? Enjoy the nectar and then fly away? Maybe you can put limits on yourself and monitor your intake. Tons of people can do this and do it well—for a while, until something changes in their lives, some additional stressor or a tragedy. Or perhaps nothing changes and, like me, you gradually find you are drinking more than you ever set out to.

      All doctors and alcohol experts agree that alcohol is addictive. How many people do you know who drink consistently less over time? For the moment, let’s focus on “responsible,” adult drinking patterns. Sure, students are well known for binging while attending university, leaving the party-heavy environment of frat houses for steady jobs and family life can reset the amount they regularly drink. But once they’ve set their long-term patterns, isn’t it true that people tend to drink more, not less, over time?

      We used to tease one of my friends because she was tipsy after half a glass of wine. Her low tolerance was the butt of jokes for years; however, when I saw her last week, she drank two large glasses at dinner and felt sober enough to drive home. Alcohol is addictive, and your tolerance increases over time. It’s a dangerous road no matter how little you drink or how in control you think you are. In fact, recent neurological studies demonstrate that the brain changes in response to alcohol. These changes increase tolerance, diminish the pleasure derived from drinking, and affect the brain’s ability to exercise self-control.⁴⁴ We will talk in detail about the effects of alcohol on the brain in a later chapter.

      A Neglected Warning: The Homeless Drunk

      Why aren’t we forewarned by the dead bees at the bottom of the pitcher plant? We have all seen people who’ve lost everything to addiction, who beg on the street with a bottle of booze in a brown paper bag. Isn’t this vagabond like the rotting bodies of the other trapped bees? Does this person help us to see the danger? Perhaps for a few. But most of us hide behind the arbitrary line we have drawn between “alcoholics” and “regular drinkers.” We don’t blame the addictive drug in our glass. Instead, we believe that there is something wrong with the addict on the street.

      Thinking the alcoholic on the street is different allows us to believe ourselves to be immune. What has happened to him cannot possibly happen to us. We are not in danger of becoming one of “those” people. Of course, we don’t know his backstory, that he was a smart, successful businessman with a growing family. We don’t know how alcohol ensnared him, and he lost everything to the most accepted, deadly, and widely used of all drugs.⁴⁵

      Let’s look at it a different way. We see the homeless man on the street like a bee views an ant that has crawled into the pitcher plant. The ant doesn’t have wings; therefore, he is not like me, the bee. I have wings; I am in control. I can escape whenever I want to. But in reality both the ant and the bee are in mortal danger.

      The last time I was on the Las Vegas strip everyone, everywhere was drinking. I mean, hey, it’s Vegas. The drinkers came in all varieties, from giggling girls with the “yards” of fruity drinks to the bachelor-party boys with their 40 oz. beers. They were young, vibrant, and full of life. I watched them walk right by a beggar with his bed on the street. He had no food but clutched a bottle of alcohol hidden in a paper bag. It was clear to any passerby that drinking had destroyed his life. All of the “regular” drinkers looked directly at him. Many even gave him spare change.

      But did they question the substance in their own cups? Did they realize they were drinking the same life-destroying poison as the homeless man? Did it prevent them from ordering their next drink? Sadly, no.

      The Descent: When Did I Lose Control?

      Is it so hard to accept that the youngsters, experimenting with alcohol, are like the bee landing on the edge of the plant and tasting the nectar? That the homeless man begging for food is just at a more advanced stage in the descent?

      A recent study by the Prevention Research and Methodology Center at Pennsylvania State University measured the college binge drinking habits of students whose parents had allowed them to drink in high school. The findings demonstrate that teens who drink in high school have a significantly higher risk of binging in college. The study also confirms how much